Indigenous Digital Art as Politics in Australia

This essay contributes to discussions about Indigenous politics and debates about contemporary democracy. It uses a case study of video art produced by young indigenous people and a community development organisation in the Pilbara, Australia. Those involved in the project use digital media under the auspices of the Big hART Yijala Yala Project to produce an interactive comic series. The essay addresses the following questions: Do contemporary community development projects play a conservatising role serving the interests of a neoliberal polity? Given the long-standing practice of representing modern media as a vehicle for western domination what, if anything, do these projects imply about the political relations between Aboriginal and non-indigenous Australians? Are Indigenous media and cultural work inherently political? What conceptions of the political are at stake in such arguments? We focus on how certain groups of young people use new media, and how their activities are political. The argument is that Indigenous media like these are ‘inherently political’ because they are about efforts to reclaim the images of indigenous peoples for themselves.     

Disentangling genetic and environmental influences on early language development: The interplay of genetic propensity for negative emotionality and surgency,and parenting behavior effects on early language skills in an adoption study

Parenting and children's temperament are important influences on language development. However, temperament may reflect prior parenting, and parenting effects may reflect genes common to parents and children. In 561 U.S. adoptees (57% male) and their birth and rearing parents (70% and 92% White, 13% and 4% African American, and 7% and 2% Latinx, respectively), this study demonstrated how genetic propensity for temperament affects language development, and how this relates to parenting. Genetic propensity for negative emotionality inversely predicted language at 27 months (β = −.15) and evoked greater maternal warmth (β = .12), whereas propensity for surgency positively predicted language at 4.5 years (β = .20), especially when warmth was low. Parental warmth (β = .15) and sensitivity (β = .19) further contributed to language development, controlling for common gene effects.     

Collaboration in a Virtual World: Support for Conceptual Learning?

Immersive and semi-immersive Virtual Reality (VR) systems have been used for training in the execution of procedures, in exploring (often static) 3D structures such as architectural designs or geographical features, and in designing buildings or constructing molecules. In a separate line of technological development, the availability of distributed computing capabilities has led to VR systems that provide facilities for groups of students that are geographically separated to learn together in a collaborative manner. However, relatively little work has been done to investigate the advantages of such Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVEs) for learning the underlying conceptual content.A pilot study is described which features several worlds designed as part of the Distributed Extensible Virtual Reality Laboratory (DEVRL). The basic results are presented along with a discussion as to how the research could be moved forward to provide improved support for conceptua l learning. The discussion also raises the issues of how the interfaces design affects conceptual learning; of navigation and conceptual learning; of the role of collaboration in learning; and of the difficulties associated with constructing dynamic VR worlds. © IFIP, published by Kluwer Academic Publishers     

When Children Treat Condemnation as a Signal: The Costs and Benefits of Condemnation

Condemnation is ubiquitous in the social world and adults treat condemnation as a costly signal. We explore when children begin to treat condemnation as a signal by presenting 4- to 9-year-old children (N = 435) with stories involving a condemner of stealing and a noncondemner. Children were asked to predict who would be more likely to steal as well as who should be punished more harshly for stealing. In five studies, we found that 7- to 9-year-old children treat condemnation as a signal—thinking that a condemner is less likely to steal and should be punished more harshly if caught hypocritically stealing later. We discuss the implications of these results for children’s emerging understanding of signaling and moral condemnation.     

Assessing Anonymous Communication on the Internet: Policy Deliberations

Anonymous communication on the Internet offers new opportunities but has ill-understood risks. This article helps to ground the policy debates by examining some fundamental aspects of anonymous social behavior and current controversies over anonymous communications. It is a companion to the article in this issue, "Anonymous Communication Policies for the Internet: Results and Recommendations of the AAAS Conference." It examines the social character of anonymous communication and the ways that anonymous communication has played important roles for professionals such as journalists and the police. It also explains some of the new technological supports for anonymous communication on the Internet. The openness, decentralization, and transnational character of the Internet challenge the efficacy of traditional control mechanisms and have raised issues related to accountability, law enforcement, security and privacy, governmental empowerment, and e-commerce. Yet, to ban or restrict all anonymous communication online because of the harms it could bring would deny its benefits to those people who may legitimately gain from it. This article helps to understand how to balance these positions.     

Anonymous Communication Policies for the Internet: Results and Recommendations of the AAAS Conference

The Internet offers new opportunities for anonymous and pseudonymous communications. Users can, for example, engage in political advocacy, receive counseling, and perform commercial transactions without disclosing their identities. The cloak of anonymity can also facilitate socially unacceptable or criminal activities because of the difficulty in holding anonymous users accountable. This article reports the results of a conference on anonymous communication organized by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Among the findings were that online anonymous communication is morally neutral; that it should be considered a strong human and constitutional right; that online communities should be allowed to set their own policies on the use of anonymous communication; and that individuals should be informed about the extent to which their identity is disclosed online. The article discusses how anonymous communications can be shaped by the law, education, and public awareness, and highlights the importance of involving all affected interests in policy development.     

Post-16 Education,Semi-dependent Youth and the Privatisation of Inter-age Transfers: Re-theorising youth transition

This paper critically reviews historical and contemporary debates around the study of youth transitions and social change in the sociology of education and elsewhere. It argues that current accounts of recent social change of the 'post' variety tend to both over state and simplify the character of these changes. The paper suggests that it is more appropriate to think of change in terms of the reconfiguration of relationships between 'inflexibility' and 'flexibility', independence and dependency, and the public and the private. Substantively, these things can be studied through the 'intergenerational transfer' of 'assets' of various kinds within kin networks. On this basis, the paper argues for a shift away from a narrower focus upon parents that has been the basis for some recent useful and relevant work on educational decision-making in sociology of education in the UK. These issues about decision-making are related to the developing debate around Rational Action Theory and culturalist vs structural approaches. It is suggested that recent work in the areas of stratification and class formation theory would prove of value to these, and other, concerns in the sociology of education.